Purchasing decisions can be greatly influenced by the display of merchandise. A merchandise display unit which attracts attention and displays goods in a pleasing and accessible manner encourages shoppers to purchase items on impulse.
Typically, retail stores have uniform, parallel rows of shelves and uniform, grid-like aisles permitting access to those shelves. Merchants who wish to highlight certain goods for impulse purchase will often provide free-standing merchandise display units at the end of a row of shelves or in the middle of some of the larger aisles. The best of such free-standing merchandise display units will permit viewers to see as much merchandise as possible. Ideally, such units will also themselves be attractive so that shoppers will look in their general direction, thus increasing the likelihood that the merchandise on those units will be viewed and purchased by the shoppers.
Merchandise is frequently sold in containers of various sizes. In addition, certain merchandise is in greater demand than other merchandise. With the changing seasons, this demand can fluctuate to an even greater extent. Some merchandise is suited to display in deep containers, while other merchandise is more suitably displayed on flat or angled shelves. For all of these reasons, an ideal merchandise display unit would provide for maximum flexibility and changes of that unit into various configurations, with various shelf sizes and types.